Potential impacts of projects results are seen in:
1. Economy: Reducing negative economic impacts through loss of IP is key.
Uptake and industrial development, with further related research, could longer term lead to: (i) new lines of business – initially for GeoLang with a direct follow-on through business partners' supply chains - and new business ventures in other countries whilst protecting corporate assets from accidental harm; (ii) opportunities from the above for exploitation of the product in new market sectors; (iii) reduction in downstream damage to corporate reputation and reduction in legal expenditure, allowing costs and goodwill to be put towards improving business productivity; (iv) reduction in likelihood of breach of confidence, retaining fair business competition; (v) improved corporate governance and awareness of protection schemes; (vi) improved quality of life for employees through creation of a trusting workplace. The market opportunity here is believed to be substantial. (Impact timeframe: 2-5 years following ASCEMA, and longer in retaining EU competitive advantage in foreign territories.)
2. People: A 2009 Proofpoint report claimed that 34% of US companies reported impacts from the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information, and 33% of US companies employed specific staff just to monitor the content of outbound email. Price Waterhouse Cooper in their 2016 report now put the numbers at 90% of large enterprise and 74% of small enterprises suffering a data breach in the past 12 months. Helping to avoid the costs and other implications relating to such activities beyond the enterprise perimeter into the supply chain would also help to alleviate both financial and reputational implications (see: 1. Economy). Many such problems occur accidentally – this is suspected to be a reasonably sizable proportion – so in such instances the situation might be recoverable if discovered early through our approach.
3. Society: Systematic monitoring of document contents, albeit potentially controversial, may be helpful both to organizations and to employees in actively reinforcing provisions of information security/sharing policies, potentially avoiding the need for later interventions, disciplinary actions, or costly legal proceedings and potential costs through the welfare budget. Corrective actions would remove such costs from the parties involved. At minimum, ASCEMA will also contribute towards the debate on the potential benefits of appropriately formulated, automated, non-intrusive and preventive monitoring. (Impact timeframe: 3-5 years following ASCEMA)
4. Knowledge: Information growth continues to outpace our ability to deal with it. The existing research prototype can handle full-document matching, akin to plagiarism detection, at a speed suitable for large scale and real-time use – approaching the ‘speed of search’. ASCEMA will help us to understand whether there are specific boundaries to prevent scaling such an approach to the entire web, and will also improve our knowledge of techniques suitable at scale for addressing the problem of obfuscation when dealing with such matching. The industrial partners will provide both technical and business challenges to such a system and, with keen interest in a successful outcome, in shaping the opportunities for exploitation of such a system. Lessons learnt through ASCEMA will also help in formulating new research questions, expanding the extent of knowledge about the existing research and, potentially contributing resources to future activities outside ASCEMA. (Impact time-frame: During and immediately following ASCEMA)
